Author Craig Chenery has released a new reference guide to zombie flicks with a special eye on their special effects and gore! With this sub-genre going super nova over the last few years, I'm positive Craig covers at least a few zombie flicks you haven't heard yet!

I’ve never seen the original “Laid to Rest”. I mention this fact as it’s the root cause of most of my problems with the sequel, “Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2”. Unlike a good sequel, which will expand upon the world introduced by the original in a way that gives old fans more of what they love and simultaneously creates new fans, “Chromeskull” takes a decidedly different approach.

For once, I'm at a loss of words. I'm no stranger to shocking horror films. I own a copy of "Cannibal Holocaust". I caught "Human Centipede: First Sequence" in theaters. I survived "Anti-Christ". But this film, "Begotten", makes those movies look like Pixar creations. Where "Cannibal Holocaust" occasionally throws a left hook at the viewer with graphic violence, “Begotten” delivers a non-stop barrage of uppercuts and pounding fists. Where “Human Centipede: First Sequence” cuts the shock with humor, “Begotten” has no chaser and offers no respite from the terrible images it contains.

In honor of today's NBA Tipoff, allow me to present to you a clip of the villain from "The Goonies" getting killed by a basketball for no apparent reason from Wes Craven's "Deadly Friend". Watching this clip got me thinking; why aren't there more sports themed horror movies?

I made a lot of prank calls as a kid. My friends and I were bastards like that. Chances are, if you accidentally dialed one of our cell phones, at some point in time we would be calling you back about something stupid. If you and your friends liked to hang out in the park and do whatever it is teenagers would do out in the woods, there was a non-insignificant chance that we’d be hanging out just out of sight and would be calling you on the park’s pay phone and trying to creep you out. Luckily, we never got caught or otherwise dealt with any negative repercussions of doing this so much.

Growing up, I had a really close friend who would scour the then emerging internet for lists of movies and then hunt them down relentlessly for our viewing. There was always one film that eluded us however. That was Lucio Fulci’s 1980 film, “City of the Living Dead” (also known as “The Gates of Hell” in some home video releases). What drew us to the it was the description of the insanely over the top gore, women vomiting up their internal organs, people’s brains being ripped out the back of their skulls, men having their heads run through with power drills... this movie sounded insane.

It’s a new decade, and we appear to be on the cusp of a new cycle in horror. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse introduced the mainstream to the drive-in gore flicks of the ’60’s and ’70’s and has started a new trend at the theaters. This year has already seen "Piranha 3D" and "Machete", and with movies such as "Hobo with a Shotgun" around the corner, we appear to be at the beginning of a contemporary Grindhouse revival.